Searching the Past to Understand the Future

December 2011

12/30/2011

I’ve come to the conclusion that the easiest form of blog fodder for me is to simply link me to an article by Kay Hymowitz. I suppose that’s a protip for those of you who want more content from me and don’t really care if it’s repetitive and angry. It seems, after all, that every time I run across an article by Kay Hymowitz the article itself is repetitive and stupid.

I (unwittingly) followed a link to one from the comments over at Sadly, No! and was surprised by two things: 1. good god, the woman’s been writing these articles for at least three years, and 2. holy shit, she’d been recycling the same article. I had to check the byline, since I knew I’d read parts of the article she wrote (and blogged on them) before, but the articles in question weren’t from 2008. This “most recent” one was.

Since I can’t leave well enough alone, I find it absolutely necessary to, yet again, wade in to this horrid stew of misogyny, stupidity, douchebag apology,[1] and Uncle Tom feminism. Why? Because this sort of shit matters.

There is a certain subset of men who are horrid, vile people. There’s absolutely no way around this.

The situation is this: a 15 year-old girl posted a picture of her smiling face with her new copy of a Carl Sagan book on the atheism thread over at reddit. She was then inundated by a whole bunch of men, many claiming to be significantly older than her, making rape jokes, kidnap jokes, and any number of increasingly disturbing anal rape jokes. There are literally absolutely no excuses for this. Absolutely no one should be subjected to that sort of bullshit from anyone, ever, anywhere.

This is the behavior of sociopaths.

No one should ever, for any reason whatsoever, be subjected to a pile-on of strangers making commentary about the value of their own blood as a sexual lubricant during unwanted anal sex. It’s not funny, it’s not cute, it’s not cool, and it’s not even remotely civilized. It’s making rape jokes. It is threatening someone with unwanted bodily harm of a most intimate sort for giggles.

The worst thing about this, though, is that Watson chose to highlight only the comments that were upvoted by a margin of at least 2:1. It put into stark relief the problem of anyone trying to make the, “But it’s just a few bad eggs making tasteless jokes,” defense. Yes, it was a few bad eggs making tasteless jokes. And several hundred other bad eggs, well, egging them on and supporting them.

So, again, let’s recap: a bunch of guys on the internet threatened to forcibly sodomize a teenage girl and a whole shitload of other guys stood around, watched, and laughed. When someone pointed it out the big shitstorm was, “How dare you rain on our parade?” Yes, men such as PeeZed and Ed Brayton vocally smacked down the dipshits and their apologists, but the fact of the matter is that it should not have been necessary. People should know better than to threaten to visit anal rape women just because they’re cute and have the temerity to, y’know, exist.

This is a huge problem.

But what does it have to do with Kay Hymowitz, or an article Kay Hymowitz wrote in 2008? I’m glad you asked. No, really, I am.

Men who threaten to anally rape teenagers on the internet can only get away with it in an environment where there’s no social cost to threatening to anally rape teenagers. They can only thrive in an environment where they’re celebrated for the humorousness level of their anal rape jokes. It’s really not that hard to stop the problem, but somebody has to stop letting it happen. Consider, for instance, how quick people are to cry racism when some random Tea Partier goes after Barack Obama for something. Shouldn’t we be crying, “Holy shit, there’s something wrong with you?” whenever men treat women like garbage?

Is it weird that I even have to ask this question? I think it’s weird that I have to ask this question. I mean, seriously. It’s nearly 2012, people.

Anyway, Kay Hymowitz…right.

Some of the biggest actors in the “treat women like pieces of meat who only deserve to be fucked” sphere are the MRAs. I’ve mentioned them many, many times, but for the uninitiated, MRA stands for “Men’s Rights Activist.” The “rights” of men they’re activisting about are pretty much the same as the “rights” of white people to treat those stupid darkies like sub-humans. They see feminism and the feminist movement as this terrible thing that is well on its way to ruining men as we know them.

MRAs enjoy a strong Venn Diagram overlap with another group of dipshits known as Pick Up Artists, or PUAs. Basically, PUAs sit around and share tips about how to pick up hot women, fuck them, and then never talk to them again. Think Barney Stinson from How I Met Your Mother, but without the redeeming qualities of being NPH, scripted, and Wayne Brady’s white brother. MRAs and PUAs, while often sharing bodies and everything, most definitely have one major thing in common: they believe women are good for absolutely nothing outside of the whole “temporary penis receptacle” thing.

It occurred to me today whilst juxtaposing a terrible Kay Hymowitz article and an absolutely awful collection of men on reddit that there might just be a commonality here.

In the Hymowitz article in question, entitled “Love in the Time of Darwinism,”[1] pretty much tries to prove the point that men are simply trying to evolve in the face of feminism. This, I shouldn’t have to tell you, is incredibly stupid. “Darwinism” doesn’t apply to this situation in any way, shape, or form, beyond the whole idea of competition for sexual selection. The collection of dim bulbs and ne’er do wells that occupy Kay Hymowitz’s tragically depressing world are trying to have sex, but aren’t actually trying to perpetuate the species. I imagine that your average PUA lives in terror of the day he gets a call that starts, “Hey, um, we hooked up about nine months ago…”

Basically, “Darwinism” here is used, whether Hymowitz realizes it or not, in the sense of “Social Darwinism.” Social Darwinism, of course, gives us such non-evolutionary bullshit as, “Them darkies ain’t as good as us white folk,” and, “Hey, let’s kill all the Jews, since they’re obviously inferior to us due to their strange lack of blond hair and blue eyes.” Let’s not dress this up as something more interesting or less infuriating than it is. I mean, really.

Anyway, it’s articles like this that provide cover for jackasses. Let’s consider this gem for a minute:

For one illustration of dating à la Darwin, consider what’s known as the Seduction Community. The Community is a loose network of dating coaches, gurus, and their followers whose philosophical origins lie variously in Darwin, Norman Vincent Peale, and hyperlogical geekdom. Women want alpha males, the Seduction Community agrees; with some effort at self-improvement, any man can learn the game—Game, as it is reverently known—that will turn him into a Pick Up Artist (PUA).

I’d go pull out my bottle of Woodford Reserve and turn this in to a weasel word drinking game, but I’m afraid I don’t want to die of cirrhosis of the liver before I get a chance to see 2012. But let’s unpack this. It’s the “Seduction Community.” Oh, that’s sweet. Women like seduction, right? That plays off of the notion of romance and whatnot. And community? Who doesn’t like community? And, hey, if you name-check Darwin and Norman Vincent Peale and say it has “philosophical origins” that makes it sound like people sat down and thought long and hard about this shit.

It teaches the ordinary nice guy—in Gamespeak, the Average Frustrated Chump (AFC)—how to reinvent himself to survive in a ruthless dating environment. That means desensitizing the AFC to rejection and, alas, building up his jerk quotient. Teachers encourage clients to project confidence and sexual energy, what is called, depending on the guru, “cocky funny” or “amused mastery.” In The Aquarian, a New York–based music magazine, Kevin Purcell describes his experience at a Game workshop: “One of our first tasks was to walk around the hotel silent, repeating in our heads ‘I don’t give a fuck what anyone thinks about me.’ This mentality, it was assumed, would help lower the wall of anxiety and make us less prone to the pain of rejection. Like soldiers responding to a drill sergeant, when asked ‘What are you?’ we were instructed to loudly proclaim, ‘A fucking ten!’ ”

Does anyone, anywhere (outside of the world of PUAs, obviously) actually see anything even closely resembling “self-improvement” in this little vignette? I sure as shit don’t.

You know what? I spent a year and a half walking around in Texas repeating variations of the words, “I don’t give a fuck what anyone thinks about me,” in my head. Did it make me more confident? Yes, actually. Did it make me a better person? Abso-fucking-lutely not. It made me an asshole. I do not like being an asshole. Apparently, though, I’m supposed to want to do this:

Remember those women who want a guy who will open the car door for them? They may be lucky if they find one willing to add “please” to “Pass the ketchup.” Women complain that instead of calling to ask them out, or even make plans for a date, men simply text, “Heading downtown. Where r u?” as they walk to the subway. That may be deliberate. “There is no longer any reason to answer the phone when a woman calls you or return her call when she leaves you a message,” insists one dating pro at World of Seduction. “What should you do? Text message, of course.” Text messages, he argues, deflect unnecessary personal involvement and keep women on edge.

True story: it just occurred to me that I accidentally did this to someone. It was more of a, “I’m really busy at the moment and I’m not sure I really want this person in my life, and as such I’m kind of distracted,” sort of unintentional thing. She yelled at me, which totally pissed me off at the time, but holy shit, I totally deserved that. And probably a swift kick in the nuts. Realizing that I basically emulated the PUA thing makes me want to go take a shower. And then go track someone down and apologize to her.

For those who are paying attention, that’s self-improvement. Realizing you’ve done something horrible and deciding not to do it anymore is a sign of improvement. Resolving to become a more horrible person is not.

Indeed, the Darwinists wonder, why pretend we’re interested in anything other than sex? Jillian Straus recalls meeting a man at a Hamptons pool party who, early on in their conversation, asked: “So, are you getting any?” One of Cohen’s lessons in contemporary politesse came on a first date with a man who asked her how many guys she had slept with and whether she owned a vibrator.

I…um…wait, what?

Seriously. What. The. Fuck?

I hate men right now. I’m not even joking. I have to be associated with people like this?

Anyway, it’s a pretty short hop from this sort of shit to joking about anally raping a teenage girl on the internet. Ultimately, the jackasses who do and encourage that sort of thing are totally at fault for their actions. People like Kay Hymowitz, who provide cover for this completely and totally irredeemably vile garbage are complicit in the problem, however. By acting like PUAs have a point and all they’re doing is choosing to respond in a completely acceptable fashion to something that women have done to them, Hymowitz allows them to think they’re doing the right thing.

Not that they’d actually care, anyway. Kay Hymowitz is a woman, after all, and not therefore not worth listening to.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go take a shower.

-------------------------

[1]I have a theory: any time you see an article that includes “Darwinism” in the title and features the word prominently in its body you can instantly dismiss the writer as someone who knows fuck-all about what Darwinism actually means. This theory is null and void if you’re reading an article by an actual biologist about actual Darwinian evolution, however. But, really, I don’t think too many of those articles actually have the word “Darwinism” in their title…

12/29/2011

I have either just come up with the greatest idea ever or the worst. Within the realms of "ideas that firmly-middle-class guy without a strangely well-stocked armory or a death wish" can come up with, at least. Either way, it's an idea that's either potentially awesome or potentially terrible. It's also part of a strange, four-legged stool of "reasons to keep this blog going," that are currently running through my head.

Stay tuned, I'ma work this shit out over the weekend. I think Monday, January 2nd will be the unveiling of my grand "plan" for 2012, such as it is.

Yes. There is a plan. No, I don't think it's too early to sell it as a work of absolute geeneeus.

My first post at the old Accidental Historian blogspot site came in March of 2007. At that point I just wanted to write and I didn't really give a shit who, if anybody, bothered to read what I wrote.

In the nearly five years I've been doing this I've rarely gotten a sustained circulation of more than 50 or so hits per day and I don't really have a large number of regular readers and/or commenters. For the most part this doesn't bug me. C'est la vie, really. I've always seen that as a bonus: I can write anything and don't have to answer to anyone. It also contains the blog's biggest weakness: I don't feel like anyone gives a shit, so why bother?

Don't take this the wrong way, my dozen-or-so regulars. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with you. I'm just saying, "Holy crap, I've been writing a goddamn blog on the goddamn internet for nearly five years and I have a circulation of basically NOTHING." I read a bunch of blogs that started well after I did that get more hits in a day than I get in a month and more comments on a post than I...um, than I ever get. Then I check my stats and see that part of the problem is that about half of my hits come from people Googling "why coldplay sucks" and ending up at a post I crapped out a year ago because I felt like making fun of Coldplay.

It's disheartening, is what I'm saying.

While I've got spare time and I just feel like it, blogging is an interesting diversion. I've had copious amounts of spare time for the better part of the past half-decade. As I see my time getting more limited, though, I'm seeing less and less need to maintain this particular, time-consuming hobby if all I'm doing is engaging in long-form talking to myself.

Thus, I find myself at a fork in the road. Either I stop blogging more-or-less entirely because of the whole concept of diminishing returns or I change the way I blog. The "way" might end up being shorter, but at the very least it would be tighter and more focused on flogging a few hobbyhorses. Believe it or not, but I have developed a fairly keen sense of what's worth writing about and what isn't over these last few years. I've also developed a fairly keen sense of what is and isn't working whilst writing. The number of posts that I've started but haven't finished has increased dramatically over the years. At least, it had up until recently, when I started throwing crap up against the wall just for the sake of doing it.

That's neither here nor there, though. What I write will, ultimately, be what I write no matter what. How I choose to write about it will be my responsibility, too. It's time for me to actually acknowledge the issue of why I write this blog, which I've ignored for quite some time.

Anyone who blogs does so because they want to have a voice. I, personally, feel that I have something to add to a larger dialogue. I feel that when I'm actually putting effort in to said additions to a larger dialogue I do so in an artful and thoughtful way. And, to put it crassly, I'm getting really fucking tired of putting a lot of time, thought, and effort in to a post, then seeing that almost no one reads that but a shitload of people are reading my "thoughts" about why Coldplay is a terrible band.

And so but anyway, all whining aside, we get to the whole bit about soliciting advice:

I know that several of my readers are, themselves, proprietors of blogs that have footprints larger than mine. It's almost impossible, really, to have a blog that doesn't get more readers than I do. I've not spent a whole lot of time thinking about promotion or circulation or any such thing, but I'm thinking it's probably time to start doing that.

As such, dear readers (who didn't come here through a Google search for Coldplay, as I'VE TOTALLY GOT THAT COVERED), how the hell does one go about increasing circulation? Seriously. I'm stymied by this one...

12/27/2011

I went to church on Christmas Eve and lived to tell about it. The last time I was in a church with an actual service of some sort going[1] before that was the summer of 2008 and I was there for a wedding. I kind of suspected I’d spontaneously combust. I, um, I did not.

I know, right?

Anyway, I actually kinda like the whole church on Christmas Eve thing. I always have. It’s especially nice at my parents’ church, since it’s all about singing old songs with traditional arrangements and brass and choral music and whatnot. I’ve always liked candlelight, too. That might seem weird, but just go with it, okay Steve? Gosh.

Church involved the traditional reading of Luke 2, which was fascinating to me. For the uninitiated, Luke 2 is the story of Joseph and Mary heading to Bethlehem in order to do their bit for the census and Mary giving birth and laying Jesus in a manger. It’s entirely possible that Christmas Eve was the first time I’ve really encountered that passage since I left the church. I was amazed by it upon this encounter, however.

The whole story is such transparent bullshit. Seriously.[2]

The setup itself doesn’t make a lick of sense. A census that requires someone to go back to his hometown in order to register would be massively disruptive to basically everyone. Considering that the Roman Empire spanned the better part of the known world and it’s inherently possible someone in the military or a trader or a minor governmental functionary could have been born in, say, Gaul and living in, say, Anatolia at the time that person would have had to make an extremely dangerous journey that would last months in order to simply raise his hand and say, “Hey! I’m alive!”

I think I’ve pointed out that problem on this very blog in the past, but there are several other things that occurred to me while reading it this time. Here’s a not-exactly-exhaustive list of problems I have with the whole thing:

1. I’d always kind of handwaved the return to Bethlehem as Joseph going home to be counted. That’s kind of how everyone seems to do it. But the Bible just says he did it because he “was of the house and family of David.” That wouldn’t make the journey the equivalent of me returning from Dallas to Chicago for the 2010 census, but me going from Dallas to Cleveland because that’s where my dad is from even though I’ve never lived in Ohio. Although since David’s house was actually started several hundred years prior to the “events” of Luke 2, it’s more like me having to return to Wales to be counted, because that’s where my great-to-the-fiftieth-power grandfather was from. That detail, meanwhile, creates another problem.

2. They go to Bethlehem so Joseph and Mary can be counted because Joseph is of the house and family of David. But Jesus was supposed to be a descendent of David. Joseph wasn’t actually the father of Jesus, so Mary would have to be the descendent of David, which would mean that Joseph and Mary were doing the incest thing (not completely unwarranted speculation, given the time period, but also not exactly a great argument). The genealogy in Matthew 1 makes it pretty clear that Jesus was descended from David through Joseph, however, which makes the incest argument somewhat more distant. So, basically, in order to harmonize the idea of Joseph and Mary heading to Bethlehem in order to place the birth of Jesus in the City of David, the Bible totally destroys the idea of Jesus being a descendant of David. It would have been way easier to just place Joseph and Mary in Bethlehem in the first place. But that destroys one other bit.

3. Jesus was, according to Christian thinking, the fulfillment of a whole fuckton of prophecies. Isaiah 9 mentions the Prince of Peace coming from Galilee, for instance. Another prophecy from Micah put his birth in Bethlehem. I’m pretty sure there wasn’t anything about being born in a stable, but who the fuck knows, amirite? The problem is that in order for Jesus to fulfill all of the various prophecies he would have had to be, well, about twenty different people. Apologists will say, “See! That’s proof that it’s impossible for Jesus to have been anything but the Messiah!” Jews would, for the record, disagree with that and say something like, “You just took a bunch of stuff out of context and spun a crazy story about it.” The Jews, for the record, are right. But we don’t just have to trust them, we have history to back this up.

Luke 2 name checks Quirinius as the governor of Syria when Augustus called his infamous census. Josephus, the Jewish historian, actually does mention this in connection with a minor Jewish revolt and the formation of the Zealots, who really friggin’ hated the idea of a census because there was this one part of the Bible where David called a census and it pissed Yahweh off. I would argue that the Zealots were more pissed off about the bit where the census was the first step in the Romans making sure they got all the taxes they were owed by the Judeans, but, really, when has anyone in history ever used religion as cover for a revolt on purely secular grounds? That’s crazy talk.

Quirinius and his census happened in 6 CE, right after Judea was added to Syria. This, for the record, is a fascinating wrinkle that I never noticed. In the space between the Maccabeean Revolt (140 BCE) and the coming of Pompey and Roman power (63 BCE), Judea enjoyed various levels of home rule and/or complete autonomy. In 40 BCE the Roman Senate gave Herod the Great complete control over Judea. Herod the Great, though, was supposedly the dude the 3 Wise Men met on their way to give the baby Jesus the first ever Christmas presents and the villain of the story of the Slaughter of the Innocents, when he ordered every child under 2 killed, thereby forcing Joseph, Mary, and Jesus to flee to Egypt to fulfill yet another prophecy. This comes up in Matthew 2, for those who are wondering.

Herod the Great died in 4 BCE. Does anyone other than me see the problem? If Quirinius’ census forced Joseph and Mary to “return” to Bethlehem in order for Herod the Great to kill a bunch of babies in order to force Joseph and Mary to flee to Egypt, that 10 year gap is a huge problem. That, however, isn’t the big wrinkle that I’ve never noticed before. I think I’ve even mentioned that problem in a post in the past.

The simple solution to that problem is that it was a different Herod. Ol’ Herod the Great had sons, after all. One was in charge of Galilee and the other took over Judea after 4 BCE. So he could have been the murderous bastard who killed a bunch of cute little babies in order to cement his position as the official King of the Jews (as selected by the Roman Senate…). Here’s the wrinkle: go back to Quirinius. His census came in 6 CE after Judea was added to Syria for governance purposes. Why did this happen? Because Herod Archelaus, the other potential villain of the 3 Wise Men story was fired by the Romans in 6 CE for incompetence. Quirinius was given Judea and told to take a survey and start taxing the Judeans after the only other Herod who could have ordered the death of Jewish babies in Bethlehem was taken out of the picture.

That’s a massive plot hole, I’d say.

It is, of course, entirely possible that the census in question was one of Augustus’s censuses that he called in 28 BCE, 8 BCE, and 14 CE or a different local census and Luke just got confused. That seems to be the consensus I’ve seen amongst the “historians who don’t want to give up on the Jesus story’s veracity” set. That is, of course, possible. But the whole bit where it calls the Bible’s historical accuracy and relevancy to the carpet makes it much harder for the apologist. It also draws attention to the fact that the whole story is an attempted harmonization of a whole bunch of different, disconnected prophecies that were strung together as a post hoc Argumentum ad Jesus as Christos.

This…this isn’t clever. It is, however, instructive. Our wordsmith has decided that it’s okay to disagree over the nature of god because it’s not possible to fully understand god due to human perspective. That’s the entire point of the original story, after all.

To our initial collection of blind men, however, has been added an atheist. This fellow is a smug bastard who hears everyone arguing over the nature of the elephant and makes a completely unwarranted conclusion that the argument itself implies his fellows are arguing over nothing.

Unfortunately for anyone who thinks this makes sense, Carl Sagan answered the argument already.[4] It would be possible for the seventh blind man to walk up to the elephant and touch the damn thing and realize that, yes, something is there. So the seventh blind man ends up looking not only like a smug bastard, but also an idiot. As such, our friend the would-be poet is saying, “Atheists are really stupid, neener neener.”

He doesn’t consider the possibility that someone who doesn’t believe that there’s no god could possibly have arrived at that belief from an intellectually rigorous place. His entire argument boils down to, “Non-religious people hear religious people arguing and decide that means religious people are wrong.” This is an incredibly arrogant and, dare I say, narrow minded approach to the non-religious. It’s especially arrogant when approaching actual atheists.

Your average apologist relies on stringing together post hoc arguments and relies on everyone accepting the same premises that he or she has already advanced. As long as you, say, just accept the idea that the Biblical account of Jesus’s birth was historically accurate that’s fine. You can even handwave past the bit where Matthew’s account and Luke’s account cannot possibly exist in the same universe. That requires everyone involved to still agree with the basic premise about the Jesus story, however. Someone who looks beyond the story to the context and says, “Wait, all of this stuff looks like it was just kind of thrown together and it doesn’t make any sense at all,” isn’t going to be swayed by being told that they don’t believe because they’re hearing different religious people argue about the nature of god.

That’s why the apologist and the non-believer talk past each other. They inhabit two completely different universes.

------------------------

[1]My storytelling guild meets in a church. I don’t think that counts.

[2]I’ll bet you didn’t see THAT coming.

[3]Quick refresher for those who don’t want to follow the link: Six blind men are taken to an elephant. Each touches a different part and says, “Ah ha, the elephant is like _______________.” They then proceed to argue about the nature of the elephant even though they are all correct and also all completely wrong.

[4]For those who don’t want to follow the link: it’s Carl Sagan’s famous story of the invisible dragon in the garage. Basically, someone comes up to you and says there’s a dragon in their garage. You say you can’t see it, so they say it’s invisible. You go up to touch it but they say it’s incorporeal. Every attempt to prove the existence of the dragon isn’t met with actual proof, but further dodges.

12/26/2011

If I’m going to stop doing this, at the very least I don’t want to leave on a note of, “Here’s a shitty post and because I wrote this shitty post I’ve decided to stop writing posts altogether.” That’s just friggin’ sad, really. And it kinda reeks of sour grapes or giving up or something, so there’s that.

Anyway, there’s this shitty post. Now, the post is, in and of itself, fairly poorly written. Also, too, it’s not intended to just say, “Hey, look at me, I’m an asshole,” but it’s exactly the post I would have written if I were trying to do that. So at least I’ve learned that all-important lesson. The idea behind the post, however, isn’t something I have a problem with. As such, I have no intention of walking it back, but I do feel the need to contextualize the point and, in contextualizing, hopefully make the point I wanted to make but without writing yet another shitty post. Because, y’know, craftsmanship.

--------------------

One of the questions I stop and ask myself from time to time is, “Why?” I find I tend to do things on autopilot a lot, so if I’m just doing something for the sake of doing it I occasionally re-evaluate. This is especially important to do when I hate what I’m doing.

When I started my Online Dating series I started asking the, “Why?” question, since it’s pretty freaking obvious that I hate online dating. This is a corollary to the larger issue that I hate dating. So in asking, “Why the hell am I doing this online dating thing,” and getting the answer, “Because it’s the easiest way to engage in the act of dating,” the next question is, “And why am I trying to engage in the act of dating?”

That question is far more interesting, since the answer is, “Fuck if I know.” The follow-up, then, is, “So why are you doing it?” My standard answer is, “Because I want to stay in practice in case I ever decide to take this seriously.”

And here we have a problem.

--------------------

I like being by myself. I’ve basically built my life around being isolated, but adjacent to humanity so that I can wander out of my isolation from time to time and say hello to the world. One of the reasons for this is that I don’t really much like Public Me, which is a problem that has stymied me for quite some time.

Public Me is loud, obnoxious, self-serving, and tries way too fucking hard. He’s a throwback to my old days as the Fat Kid who was trying desperately to be accepted and approved of by the rest of the world. I don’t like him very much, but I’ve never really been able to get rid of him. I have toned him down quite a bit, which is nice, but, again, I want him to go away.

The awkward, baffling thing here, though, is the other people seem to like Public Me. He’s apparently funny and personable these days, and memorable in what seems to be a good way. I can’t really go too deeply in to this as, again, I despise Public Me, so I have no idea what people see in Public Me. I think of him as someone who tries way too hard to force jokes that don’t work and dominates conversations just because he doesn’t know how to shut the fuck up. I regard (possibly as a bit of wishful thinking) myself as someone who is easily forgotten, but I’m apparently the only one who does so. I suspect there’s a reason for that.

Public Me spends his time at war with Private Me.

I like Private Me. Private Me is quiet and contemplative. Private Me can go weeks without talking to anyone outside of required interactions. Private Me really would be forgotten in a crowd, since he’d probably show up, talk to no one, then leave having made no impression on anyone.

There are a few people in this world who have met Private Me. He basically only comes out in one-on-one interaction with people I know well and manifests as a guy who can sit in the corner and talk about basically anything for hours on end over coffee or beers. For the most part, though, he hangs out and watches the world. This is the nature of being private, after all.

--------------------

Public Me and Private Me share interests and experiences. I can’t imagine how they wouldn’t, really, since this isn’t an issue of multiple personalities or any such thing. One of those interests, it should surprise no one, is Trickster. The difference is that Private Me wants to study Trickster while Public Me wants to be Trickster.

Trickster, when it gets right down to it, is kind of a dick. He is selfish, self-absorbed, and cruel. All he cares about when interacting with the world is the question, “What can I get out of this?” If it helps someone then that’s great. If it hurts someone that’s great, too. What matters to Trickster is that he gets what he went out to get.

This is why I was fascinated with N.K. Jemisin’s treatment of Trickster as a young boy. Ultimately, Trickster is immature, interacting with the world on a circumscribed level where all that matters is how everything stacks up in the win-loss column. He’ll play fair, but change the rules. Imagine Trickster as playing an endless game of Calvinball with the world. Calvin is, for all intents and purposes, Trickster anyway. Hobbes is the adult world, gaining the occasional upper hand but never actually winning because he’s always trying to win the last game or even the last minute of this game.

--------------------

I never took the whole online dating thing seriously. It was all just a way to actually avoid dating entirely. Basically, I was playing a game and the rules were, “Meet crazy women, use them to justify not making any sort of commitment. “ Unfortunately, from time to time I managed to run across women who didn’t understand that was the game I was playing and were actually decent human beings.

How does someone who is operating from a disingenuous position deal with someone who isn’t without causing a great deal of destruction? The answer to that, I do believe, is, “That’s not possible.” While I recognized that this was both a possibility and a problem, I continued to play my little game of Calvinball with complete strangers. The only explanation for this behavior that makes a lick of sense is, “I am selfish, self-absorbed, and cruel.”

I do not like thinking of myself as a person who has such qualities. The only way to stop being an asshole is to stop being an asshole, I suppose. So the only way I can stop that in this specific case is to stop all dating-related activity completely. All I’m doing is using the women I meet as story fodder, after all.

--------------------

That might seem extreme, absurd, even. But when the question, “Why?” leads to unexpected places the follow-up inevitably must be, “What do you want, instead?” I answer that question overwhelmingly with, “To be left alone.”

It’s a mug’s game, then, if you’re the sort of woman who makes the mistake of deciding you want to date me. Chances are good that you’ll meet Public Me. If you, for reasons that completely escape me, decide you like Public Me, it won’t end well, since you’ll be attracted to the me that I can’t stand. The more time you spend with Public Me the more I’ll see how far I can push before you push back or leave. This probably seems remarkably immature. There’s a reason for that: it’s the whole Trickster/child thing. On one level I’ll want to push your buttons to amuse myself. On another level I won’t know how to break it off and I’ll basically try to make sure you leave because that’s a win according to my bizarre little game of dating Calvinball.

--------------------

There’s another follow-up question that must be asked: why don’t I just get rid of/redirect Public Me?

Believe me, I’d like to. Private Me, it shouldn’t be surprising, doesn’t do well in public. Public Me simply manifests when the need arises and I have very little recourse in dealing with that other than saying, “I’m never going out in public again.” When it gets right down to it, Public Me is a big ol’ defense mechanism fueled by insecurity.

Fighting that by never going outside again seems like a lousy option. By the same token, it doesn’t seem like a lousy option, since I don’t mind being alone. Thus I live in tension. At the moment I simply do not know how to resolve that tension.

--------------------------

A friend of mine who knows me well enough pointed towards an alternate and/or complementary explanation for my conundrum. It basically boils down to the notion that I have a pretty long history of running afoul of manipulative and controlling women. He also pointed out that I’ve been mostly seeking stability for the last few years and women are not at all a source of stability for me.

I find the latter part of that fascinating. I instinctively want to avoid the former, though, since it basically sounds like an Argumentum ad Bitches Be Trippin’, and the Argument from Bitches Be Trippin’ is usually the first (and last) resort of the misogynist scoundrel. It has a certain amount of explanatory power, however, especially when combined with the Public Me/Private Me dichotomy.

I don’t have a good history with women who don’t treat me as a child or like shit, basically. The ones who haven’t have historically also not really wanted much of anything to do with me. As such, this has left me with a fairly binary categorization of women as either interested in me and not worth it or uninterested in me and possibly/probably worth it. The interested and not worth it category then breaks down to cynical and manipulative or crazy and desperate.

Thinking on it, I’m not surprised in the least that my two somewhat long-term relationships, Ashley and Amy, were with the cynical and manipulative type, while my abortive dating attempts since 2008 have mostly been with the crazy and desperate types. Ashley was the first one who seemed to give a shit, but she was also a cheater who flagrantly manipulated me and even after I broke it off with her and said some astonishingly horrible things in the process still tried to reconnect with me on a schedule I could almost set my clocks to every year for the next nine years.[1] Amy…meh, I’ve talked about her enough.

After that there’s a collection of oddball characters I’ve enjoyed telling stories about from the safe remove of time and space. Tossed in there, though, are a few genuinely good women who didn’t seem to care much for me or who were unavailable for one reason or another. On some level it’s bad luck or bad timing. On some level, though, it’s also self-fulfilling prophecy.

In this theory, then, Private Me becomes the only real person I can genuinely trust when the chips are down. So Public Me’s games of relational Calvinball are just there to protect me and keep me solitary while I attempt to figure out how to make it through life. This creates a whole new set of problems.

Basically, I’ve been running around and creating chaos in the lives of others. Either I can decide to stop being a giant dick and actually try to meet someone with best intentions or I can throw my hands up, say, “Fuck that noise,” and go with a life of solitude. The latter is actually rather attractive, but it’s really something that requires a certain level of commitment. Otherwise I’m just playing games and it’s other people getting hurt by them.

-----------------

[1]The final (I hope) round of that came with her trying to start the dialogue by telling me that no one knew me better than she did and no one cared about my like she did. NINE FUCKING YEARS OF ALMOST MINIMAL CONTACT AFTER I TOLD HER TO FUCK OFF AND DIE. Let that one sink in for a minute.

12/25/2011

So this time last year I was in Irving, Texas, getting drunk off Dogfish Head and Woodford Reserve and watching Exo Squad.

It kinda sucked on a whole bunch of levels, actually.

Now I'm back in Chicago. I just finished wrapping presents in a style I like to call "Aspirational Half-Assed." Yesterday I wandered about in the Kristkindlmarket before having dinner with my family at Miller's Pub and going to see the CSO's "Welcome Yule" program. I even went to church tonight and managed to not spontaneously combust upon walking through the doors.

Now I'm listening to Harry Connick, Jr.'s When My Heart Finds Christmas. Life, it must be said, is good. Although I was going to watch the Venture Brothers Christmas episode, but it turns out I don't actually have it on DVD. I am slightly disappoint.

Either way, here's hoping that your Christmas is filled with warmth and joy. And make sure to avoid that Rat King guy. He's kind of a jackass.

Newt and I agreed that the analogy is December 1941: We have experienced an unexpected set-back, but we will re-group and re-focus with increased determination, commitment and positive action. Throughout the next months there will be ups and downs; there will be successes and failures; there will be easy victories and difficult days - but in the end we will stand victorious.

Please, someone have John Lithgow read the whole thing. That's about the only way we'll hit the appropriate chuztpah of comparing not getting enough signatures to do get on a ballot with getting your shit bombed out in your home harbor. Gingrich's absolute lack of class and perspective would be awe-inspiring if we didn't already know he's a completely classless blowhard, anyway...

Way back in the day I started this blog because I wanted to talk about history. I’d just graduated and was working at a terrible job and was still looking for my history fix. Blogging, then, made sense. It is a subject that requires a great deal of writing and blogging allows for that. I could basically write history papers all day. And I’m a giant fucking nerd who at the time had a job that required no time, thought, or effort, so that totally appealed to me.

Eventually, as is the wont of existence in this mortal realm, the blog evolved. When I decided to leave Christianity it became a place where I could talk about what I was going through. Since I used a certain ex-girlfriend to drive the metaphor I pushed that in the direction of using the blog to talk about relationships. Since I was exploring the story and the telling of stories, this blog was a natural outlet for my discussions of and meditation on the story and its nature.

The problem is that the way I used this blog was predicated on a simple, basic requirement: I need time. My posts don’t usually just spring up out of nowhere, fully written. The best ones took a couple hours to write after I thought about the underlying ideas for days or weeks. It was the ultimate expression of the old admonition, “You think too much.”

Blogs were invented for those of us who want to justify thinking too much.

Anyway, one thing I avoided doing as much as possible was just shitting out a post. It’s no fun to just be all, “Meh, I’ma write now.” It’s no fun to read that, either.

This is where I’m now hitting a problem. All I feel like I do anymore is shit out posts and slap them up for the sake of it. At best that approach leads to stuff that’s not worth reading. At worst it leads to, well, utter trash.[1] I think I can do what I’ve always done, so I try to do it and it ends up as a complete failure because I’ve forgotten why I used to be able to write posts that mashed a half-dozen thoughts together. That bit where I put some thought in to the crafting of a post and some time to make sure I’ve properly defined my terms and I know what the follow-up is? Yeah, that kind of matters…

So, basically, what we have here is an argument for craftsmanship and quitting before you’ve worn out your welcome.

I’m just a guy who writes a blog. I’ve never had a particularly big or sustained following (although I do have a remarkably consistent set of regulars. Thanks, all). That really never bugged me, as I wrote because I wanted to and the bit where no more than a dozen or so people seemed to care basically allowed me freedom to write exactly what I wanted to and that was great.

But what happens when the answer to, “What do I want to write?” turns out to be, “Nothing, really?”

At that point the greatest strengths of this blog become huge, gaping liabilities. The bit where the purpose of this blog can be described as, “Whatever I want it to be,” becomes, “I don’t have a friggin’ clue what to write about right now, so I won’t,” or, “Well, this is on my mind, maybe I’ll throw it against the wall and see if it sticks.” So I end up with posts that are objectively complete and utter shit. If I’m lucky. The bit where only a few people read the blog then becomes, “Well, I’m not exactly adding much of anything to any sort of larger dialogue, so why bother?” and, “Well, if I’ve got a choice between wasting peoples’ time with crap posts and not posting at all, I think I’ll choose the latter, thankyouverymuch.”

So this is the conundrum in which I find myself. I don’t think my style (or mentality) allows for just occasionally throwing crap against the wall. But I also don’t think that my life currently allows for going back to my old style of writing posts that are part of a series (or, at least, a series of interconnected thoughts). I can’t really do, “Hey, here’s what happened today and here’s my response to it,” too often, since I usually get around to those posts about a week after it’s been reported on Yahoo News, which means I usually get around to it about a month after it’s been discussed to death already.

This is my conundrum. As things stand I’m wasting your time and mine. I’m not at all certain there is an option to avoid doing that while continuing to write this blog.

-------------------

[1]The proximate cause of the post in question, again, was N.K. Jemisin’s Trickster character in the Inheritance series. I’ve been meaning to use that series, Ian Douglas’s Star Carrier books, and Catherynne Valente’s Dirge for Prester John books on a long series about the importance of world-building. All of that was supposed to be a follow-on to the Night of the Living Dead Christian stuff.

But I never did any of that. So from my perspective the post I wrote came in as a logical interstitial to a series of other thoughts. From your perspective it came out of nowhere with a total, “What the fuck? Srsly?” At least, I imagine that’s how it comes across.

Accidental Historian is probably going away soon. I just don't give a shit any more. I also don't have nearly as much time as I used to, so that combination of, "I don't give a shit," and, "I don't have time," is kind of a problem.

12/23/2011

There are few things that are pleasant in self-admission like that. But there are many things that are honest in such self-assessment. I suppose, in the end, that there is something pleasant about honesty, even of the least pleasant variety.

It occurred to me while I was reading N.K. Jemisin’s Inheritance Trilogy. They’re fantastic books and if Jemisin ever offers a master class on worldbuilding I want to be there for it. Her most inspired decision of all, though, was her decision to incorporate Trickster as a primary character and have her Trickster choose to be a child.

I will admit that as a student of Coyote and Raven I hated that choice at first. But the longer I was with her character the more I appreciated the choice. The more I appreciated the choice the more I realized she was revealing something about Trickster that I’d never before considered. The more I considered this new notion of Trickster the more I realized that part of my reason for identifying so strongly with Coyote is that underlying assumed nature of Coyote: he is selfish, self-absorbed, and cruel.

--------------------------

“I’ll tell you a story if you want,” she said, “Later, in private. So you won’t be embarrassed.”

I’d never met her before, so the idea that any story she could tell embarrassing me was almost entirely outside the realm of possibility. It helps, too, that I am almost entirely shameless anymore. There are things I’d rather people not know because I don’t want to talk about them, but that’s not the same as something I’d rather people not know because I’d be embarrassed. I realized something not long before I started the Online Dating series right here on this blog: only I have the power to embarrass me. If I don’t care there isn’t a damn thing you can do to make my face red.

This goes double for strangers. “How would it embarrass me?” I asked. “You don’t even know me.”

“You’ll find out why soon enough,” she said.

I suppose you want some staging. It was a party. I’d wandered away from the knot of guys I knew reasonably well and was sitting between a guy named Stave and a cute woman who I’d decided I liked just fine but who I’d also decided I didn’t even begin to want to consider dating. She was sitting next to the would-be storyteller, who was next to another woman I didn’t know and a guy I’d met once or twice before. Oh, and there was another guy. So…basically this wasn’t a group of my closest friends. I’m dangerous in groups like that, since I simply do not give a fuck.

“Whatever,” I said.

“I saw your profile on Match.com and sent you an email and you never wrote back.”

Have I mentioned the bit where I’m selfish, self-absorbed, and cruel? Because, um, that third part kind of comes in to play here. I couldn’t fathom why that mattered. I’d be surprised to learn I had a better than 10% rate of response to emails on online dating sites. Part of the reason I stopped doing it was because I hate wasting my time. Most of the reason I feel I was wasting my time is because I’d send emails and never get a response.

In short, my best response to this was, “Welcome to my world.” I don’t think that was what I said, though. Honestly, I don’t remember what my immediate response was.

Cute girl on my left decided she was going to try to make fertilizer out of this particular load of bullshit. “You turned this down?” she asked, gesturing at the spinner of the so-called embarrassing story. She was, admittedly, not particularly unattractive.

Here’s the thing, though: if I didn’t respond there’s a 99% chance there was a good reason I didn’t (well, maybe not 99%, since there’s always a chance that, “I just plain forgot,” is an option. Seriously, try an experiment. Send me an email. See if I respond. Chances are 50-50 at best that I will. Even if it’s a fantastic email and I want to respond there’s a decent chance that I’ll read it, think, “I should respond to that,” and then never get around to it. Why? Repeat after me: selfish, self-absorbed, and cruel. The first two matter in this context). In fact, I’m pretty sure I know who she was and I know when she emailed me and I can hazard a guess that, yes, there’s a good reason I didn’t reply. Right now there are two possibilities in my mind and it might be both. They don’t matter, though. Not really.

“Maybe this can be a make-up,” said cute woman. “A do-over.”

“No.” I said. There’s that cruelty. It’s not intentional. I think, on some level, the cruelty comes from a place of kindness. Honesty, in my book, is the best policy. I’m not about to change my mind, so there’s no point in playing games or pretending in anything. And if she thinks I’m an asshole she can decide she ended up better in the deal, anyway.

I don’t think anyone is prepared for my particular brand of cruelty, though. I think it’s partially a Midwestern thing, as those of us who are from around these parts are conditioned to not be honest when it might hurt someone’s tender sensibilities. Basically, if you’re from the Midwest and you’re dating someone your family and friends hate, you’ll know your family and friends hate that person, at least as long as you’re, y’know, reasonably aware. They just won’t say it. The moment you break up with that person, though, you’ll get a flood of, “She was such a bitch, but I didn’t want to say anything,” or, “He was totally bad for you, but I knew you had to figure that out on your own.” It’s a bullshit cop-out your friends and family are engaging in. I hate to tell you that, but it’s true.

I, of course, have pulled that routine in the past. I’m a Midwesterner, after all.

Now, though, I am cruel. I am honest and without tact and honesty without tact is not kind.

Or something. I doubt that anything would have happened even if I hadn’t said, “No.” My intended audience wasn’t my jilted wannabe internet dating companion, after all, it was the one in the middle advocating for some sort of Happily Ever After that wouldn’t be happening any time soon.

--------------------------

Every once in a while I wonder if I’m not engaging in some sort of elaborate revenge fantasy. All the pretty girls ignored me in high school. Now every once in a while I get the attention of some woman or other and shut her down. I have to admit that on some level it amuses me.

If I had a nickel for every woman who ignored me I wouldn’t have to go to work.

Okay, that’s not true. But as far as hyperbole goes, it ain’t bad. I’ve been shot down and rejected a shitload of times, after all. I don’t think a lot of women know what that’s like.

In the sixth grade there was Gwen. In the seventh it was Erin. Sophomore and senior year in high school it was Katie. Junior year it was Heidi. In my post-high school years there was Amy and Abbie and Angie and Amy and Erin and Emily and Anne and Amy and Jamie and Michelle. And those are just the ones I remember off the top of my head. There are dozens more out there somewhere. None of them were from my abortive attempts at internet dating, either. None of them even matter, really, except for the three or four women I’m actually friends with on some level after meeting them through internet dating sites.

--------------------------

There is one aspect of my decision to stop dating that I try not to think about and that my little story here illustrates.

Basically, I’ve realized that there might be, somewhere in this world, decent women who actually do care about things and who run afoul of my selfishly self-absorbed cruelty and get hurt by it. In the end I can’t really help it if that happens, especially since my general default view of the world doesn’t actually include that as a possibility.[1] The fact that I can’t help it doesn’t mean that I should actively seek the opportunity to make it happen, though.

When it gets right down to it, I apparently see myself as diseased. I’ve quarantined myself off from the world to avoid infecting anyone else. In a more reasonable person that would probably be sad.

--------------------------

[1]My general attitude is that everyone forgets about me if I’m not in the room. As such, being hurt by something I’ve done is completely impossible, as I don’t matter enough to anyone to actually do anything they’ll care about long-term. I’m intellectually aware of the fact that the world doesn’t actually work this way, but by the same token the world of internet dating really fucking should work this way and I’m somewhat surprised to learn that it apparently doesn’t. The internet has a memory that only lasts until the next meme, after all.